@Arella Mae,
I personally don't like or use the term "evil" because I feel it generally has acquired too many metaphysical associations, in terms of the demonic, which aren't consistent with how I view things. But I have no problem with your use of the term, and I share your horror and revulsion at a crime like this one. Acts like this, or even the senseless and brutal murder of little Leiby Kletzky in Brooklyn, leave us searching for the appropriate terms to describe such monstrous acts of inhumanity. And, it is precisely because these acts elicit such strong emotional reactions in normal people, that descriptions that fail to capture the emotion seem inadequate.
So, I can understand why you felt that BillRM was being too detached and clinical in his reaction--draining these acts of their emotional impact reduces them to the ordinary, to the understandable, when, in fact, part of the horror of such acts is that such cold blooded brutality is not fully comprehensible to most emotionally compassionate and moral people. We wonder,"How could anyone do something
that awful to someone else?". We cannot empathize with those who commit such acts because we value human life in instances where they have displayed not just indifference, but outright hatred and contempt for the existence of another person. Our emotional reactions to such acts are perfectly valid responses--they reflect our own moral compass. Don't feel you have to apologize or explain your emotions, Arella Mae, that's part of what makes you different than the person who commits such heinous acts.
I think BillRM is way off the mark by talking about "young warriors" and dragging in street gangs and comparing them to young marine units. Hate crimes, like this, have nothing in common with those things, or even the general aggressiveness or need to prove their manhood on the part of certain young men. Hate crimes are all about scapegoating--deciding that those of a different group are not only the cause of some social ill, they are also sub-human and not deserving of the treatment one accords to real human beings. So, those scapegoats can be ridiculed, beaten, and even killed, without shame or guilt about it because they are seen as less than fully human by those committing the acts. So, in my part of the country, there were groups of teens roaming around looking for Latinos to beat up, elsewhere, gays have been beaten up or killed, or a Jew has gotten beaten up or killed, and, in Mississippi, this 18 year old punk wanted to find "a nigger" to beat up and kill, just for the fun of it. Any "nigger" would have done, because the entire racial group was the scapegoat. And finding and killing this innocent black man was exhilarating for this punk--he bragged about it--it made him feel empowered, which was part of his motive for doing what he did. He went out on the hunt, he found his prey, and he killed
it, with little awareness, let alone concern, that this was an innocent human being with emotions and a life--a life he deserved to have continue and this animal had no right to take.
I think we have an easier time understanding crimes of true passion. Even lynch mobs, and KKK groups on the warpath, generally convened in response to some triggering event--they didn't like what someone in a scapegoated group had done or said--they generally focused on specific people or in response to something specific, and passion and anger was generally operating at a high pitch. But, this recent hate crime in Mississippi, seems much more indifferent, much more devoid of emotion, much more cold-blooded--"let's go find a nigger to beat up"--no triggering event, no specific "nigger"--just a way to find some excitement when you are bored. That was the sort of thing that was going on in my area with the Latinos that a particular group of teens had scapegoated, and cruised around looking for, and beaten up--it was the way to kill an evening.
Unlike BillRM, I can't see that type of essentially dispassionate, random, hate crime as anywhere on the continuum of normal behavior, nor do I see it as a consequence of group influence. The handful of individuals who commit these acts/hate crimes as a group associate with each other precisely because they share these negative attitudes toward others, particularly toward others who are members of certain racial, or ethnic, or religious groups, or toward those of a certain sexual orientation. In addition, I think these small groups of haters are mainly comprised of losers, or misfits, or those who are in some way marginalized, and the scapegoating gives them someone they can look down on, or feel superior to. And I see all of it as reflecting serious psychopathology--not societal problems, but individual psychopathology.
I just read that the 18 year old in Mississippi is only 5 feet tall and weighs 130 pounds. Maybe his very short stature is a key to his feelings of inferiority, his need to denigrate others to pump himself up. And, behind the wheel of his truck, running over a black man, any black man, he certainly could feel like a big, powerful man, couldn't he?
